The proper paranoid attitude to security

While we’re on the subject of the Aids Information Disk …

I recall a cautionary tale told by someone who called into the company I worked for then (a UK anti-virus company that has since been acquired by another well-known company). The caller had received one of the Trojan floppy disks. He was suspicious about it, so he threw it in the bin. Good idea, right? Unfortunately, one of his employees decided to retrieve the disk and run the program, with predictable results.

At the time, I was new to the security industry. And this story served to reinforce the ‘proper paranoid attitude’ cultivated by the company I worked for: assume nothing and leave nothing to chance! It also reinforced the message about backups, and that message is as valid today as it was then. The payload of Trojans like Virus.Win32.GPCode highlights the importance of taking backups (along with having an up-to-date antivirus, a personal firewall and patched systems).

Anyone who has ever lost data understands how important it is to backup regularly.